In the retail sales industry, automated tracking, control, and other functions relating to inventory offered for sale and/or sold has become the “norm”. To this end, a barcode identified as a Universal Product Control has been developed. A UPC code is assigned to each product offered for sale. Commonly this code identifies the product, the seller, the sales price, and/or other information. Each UPC code is specific to its assigned owner/user.
Because a UPC barcode is specific to each user, the UPC barcode must be applied to individual items offered for sale by a specific user. Where large volumes of a product are sold to a given entity, the manufacturer can economically justify preprinting that entity's UPC barcode directly onto the packaging for a given product. On the other hand, where a specific user's purchase volume is relatively small, the user must attend to the application of their own barcode to the products which they offer for sale. Many instruments, devices, printers, and the like are currently available for the printing of barcode labels which can readily be applied, one by one, to individual products or to their packaging.
In the instance where a manufacturer or a distributor of a given product purchases the product in large quantities and thereafter sells or distributes the product to a large number of individual retail sellers, heretofore, the manufacturer or distributor often was forced to print out many different UPC codes (one for each of its customers) as labels and physically attach a label to each product. This process economically burdensome, especially from the aspect of the labor cost involved. This procedure is particularly applicable to those “middle man” distributors who purchase large quantities of a given product in bulk and thereafter either package or otherwise prepare each of the products for distribution to retailers of the product.
One example of products which are distributed and sold at retail are “flat goods” such as floor mats for automobiles. Bed sheets and other products also are at times sold as “flat goods”. In the instance of automobile floor mats, a distributor (or the manufacturer itself) will employ a “header” or “header card” which serves the purposes of identifying the goods plus hanging the goods vertically for space-saving display in a retail outlet. Header cards commonly take the form of an individual sheet of paperboard which is folded about its transverse centerline and fitted over, and secured to, the top edge of the flat good (e.g. a floor mat). Commonly the header is hole-punched for hanging on a rack or the like. For a large quantity of a given flat good, a common header card is commonly printed and attached to the flat good. However, either the manufacturer or the distributor is called upon to apply a proper UPC barcode to each item of the flat goods to accommodate each of their individual buyers, who in turn, sell the product at retail. In the industry, this practice of printed and attaching individual UPC barcodes to header cards has been carried out by the manufacturer or distributor, irrespective of the quantity purchased by a given retailer, all as a matter of gaining sales. Such practice obviously is costly to the manufacturer or distributor in that the known prior art does not provide a system or device for continuously printing UPC barcode information on a selected number of header cards which have previously been printed with product graphics, etc. Rather, in the prior art the header cards were printable only on a one-by-one intermittent basis. That is, the header card being printed with barcode information had to be fed to a printer head and the forward motion of the header card halted while printing took place. In like manner, where thermal printing was employed, halting of forward movement of the header card at a “curing station” also was required. Control over the movement of such header cards and timing of the printing and curing were all sources of problems in such printing devices and systems.